All of Michigan Was Once on Central Time, And That Just Doesn’t Feel Right

Michigan, with the exception of the southwestern Upper Peninsula is on Eastern Time. It's all you've ever known. But it wasn't always this way.

When time zones were established, all of Michigan was on Central Time. In fact, the Eastern Time Zone was much smaller that it is today. A 1913 Time Zone map shows that Central Time was as far east as Buffalo, New York and reached the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, Georgia.

via Wikimedia Commons

How Michigan's Time Zones Changed

At one time time zones were selected by city and used to regulate the travel of trains around the country. As early as 1885 Memoninee chose Central Time and the state followed suit.

Being today on the border between Eastern and Central Time it shouldn't surprise you that Michigan has wrangled with time a lot in the last 150 years.